The Shark Attack
by Lauren Wagner
Summary: Jack wants some very precious pearls and he sends Ragetti to get them. Will Pintel be able to save him from Jack's madness? Set before the first movie


"This is the place!" Jack suddenly announced, spreading his arms out wide. "Drop anchor now, lads!"

The anchor was dropped and the crew of the Black Pearl all came onto the deck to see what their captain was up to now.

Even his first mate Barbossa was wary about that smile of his as he turned to face them all.

"What's this all about, Jack?" Barbossa asked. "We're out in the middle of nowhere!"

"Not just nowhere, Barbossa! A nowhere that is in fact a cleverly hidden somewhere!" Jack said.

"Me 'ead 'urts." Ragetti groaned, taking out his wooden eye to rub the hole.

"Splinters agin?" Pintel asked.

"Cap'n Jack."

"Aye, 'e's a walkin' 'eadache." Pintel agreed with a nod.

"Really? I didn' fink a 'eadache could become a person." Ragetti noted in surprise.

"Rags…" Pintel sighed, rolling his eyes. "Et were jus' an expression ta show 'ow annoyin' 'e is!"

"Oh." Ragetti said softly, looking down at the ground.

"Ye still don' git et do ye?"

"No, no' really." Ragetti admitted.

"Jus' don' fink abou' et an' focus on wot the cap'n is sayin'!" Pintel snapped.

"All righ'…"

"And that is why Master Cyclops is the one I have chosen for this mission!" Jack suddenly finished and all eyes were now on Ragetti.

"Huh?" the lanky pirate asked.

A smile crossed Jack's face as Barbossa frowned at him.

"Diving for the pink pearls! That's your job, mate!"

"Jack, ye know these waters are dangerous and hold sharks in them!" Barbossa said angrily. "Yer just trying to get rid of me Piece Bearer because he refuses to give ye the wooden eye!"

"Nonsense! Harming a Piece Bearer on purpose is against the Code!" Jack laughed, waving a hand at him.

Barbossa did not like how widely he was smiling when he said this, nor the fact that he had emphasized "on purpose" in that sentence.

As the two argued, Ragetti looked over at Pintel.

"Wot should I do?"

"Do as the cap'n says." Pintel urged gently.

Ragetti nodded and slowly stepped forward, bowing his head nervously as he bit his lower lip. He flinched when Jack slapped him on the back sharply and he caught his eye as it popped out.

Jack shuddered at the sight of the splinters in the eye socket and he once again was scared by how high the man's pain tolerance was.

Shaking this fear off, he put on another winning smile as he placed an arm around Ragetti's shoulders.

"Now I need you to climb down that rope and dive down and fetch five pink pearls." He explained. "They're important, savvy?"

Handing his eye over to Barbossa, Ragetti seemed to be almost begging the older man to step in for him, but Barbossa could do nothing but shrug helplessly.

"All righ', cap'n." he mumbled and he gasped and blinked rapidly as Jack suddenly rammed two pieces of beeswax up his nostrils.

"Good!"

…

For an hour, Ragetti was forced to make trips down to dive for the pearls Jack wanted so badly. He was almost practically blinded from all of the salt water getting in his one good eye, and he was forced to just feel around now for shells. He was up to his tenth time back onto the deck of the Pearl, and he was exhausted as he held out ten pearls that he had collected with aching and tired hands.

Jack looked them over and frowned, slapping them out of his trembling hands.

"None of these are pink! How stupid are you that you can't find five simple pink pearls!?" the man raged.

"Jack, that's enough!" Barbossa snapped. "The lad has brought up enough pearls for you! We'll have enough money to make up for those pink pearls with these!"

"They're not the right pearls!" Jack snarled, and to prove his point, he picked them up and hurled them back into the ocean before turning on Ragetti.

"Please…" he begged, blood starting to spill from both nostrils. "Don' make me go back…"

"Do it!" Jack snarled and Ragetti flinched and looked to Pintel for help.

The man only looked away, wanting to keep out of this whole thing for as long as possible.

The lad needed to learn how to take care of himself, and this was the best way to do it.

With a moan, Ragetti slowly climbed back down into the water, letting himself fall back in with a soft splash.

His lithe form slowly began to swim down to where he had collected the other pearls, reaching out with one hand to grab as many shells as he could in order to break them open once he surfaced again.

The blood from his nostrils came out in lazy tendrils in the water, but he paid this no mind, only wanting to find these pink pearls Jack was obsessed with and then get out as soon as possible.

His hand closed around a shell and as he slowly started to head back up, something large hit him in the small of his back and knocked him roughly away. Bubbles shot out of his mouth violently and Ragetti swallowed a lot of salt water.

Forcing his eye open despite the pain of the salt, Ragetti realized that he was going to die when he found himself looking at a shark.

He was struck in the back again and he realized that there were in fact two sharks.

Starting to panic, Ragetti struggled to reach the surface, more blood coming out of his nose.

…

"He had better come back up with pink pearls this time." Jack grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned his back against the railing.

"Why do ye want these pearls so badly, Jack?" Barbossa asked with a frown.

"They're very rare and will make us all incredibly rich." Jack explained.

"Ragetti has come back ten times with handfuls of pearls! We could have used those instead!"

"Those were mere rocks compared to those pink ones." Jack said, waving Barbossa's argument away with one hand.

Barbossa opened his mouth to say something else when Gibbs suddenly shouted out in alarm, pointing down into the water.

"Rags has got two sharks around him!"

Immediately the crew sprang up and ran to the side, looking down to see for themselves.

Bo'sun curled his lip and scoffed softly, clicking his teeth together in annoyance.

"I was always hoping that I would be the one to kill the little bastard." He growled to no one in particular.

Jack snorted and waved the screams and loud splashing from below away easily.

"I wonder if he even found at least one pearl…"

"He's about to die and you're worried about pearls?!" Barbossa shouted at him now.

"If he dies, that's his fault." Jack said.

…

So far, Ragetti had avoided being bitten by the sharks, his thin body twisting and turning every which way in order to avoid their teeth, and he was able to lift his head up to the surface a few times before being struck again and forced back down.

His heart pounding violently, Ragetti offered up a prayer to God that he would make it through this.

As if in answer, one of the sharks rammed him in the side painfully, and he lost consciousness.

…

Pintel was down below mopping when he heard the shouting and when he came back on deck and found out why everyone was shouting out and pointing down at the water, he didn't stop to think about what he was doing.

Drawing his cutlass and dagger from his belt, Pintel charged at the railing and everyone got out of his way as he leapt over, aiming for the shark in front of an unmoving Ragetti.

Sharks are animals that think in terms of food; what can be eaten and what cannot be eaten. They do not think about other things as their brain is only able to think of those two ideas.

So when Pintel landed on the shark, it would be amazing to note that before he plunged his dagger into its face and made the waters turn red; the shark actually thought of something that was not about what could be eaten and what could not.

_What the hell?!_ was what the shark thought, just before its brain was pierced with Pintel's dagger and its body kicked away.

Its companion however did not like the idea of losing its all ready targeted prey to this newcomer and as Pintel took his dagger back from the dead shark, he was suddenly dove at and he just barely missed having his head bitten off.

One of the shark's teeth did make contact however, and a thin curving line was soon bleeding from Pintel's forehead.

If he lived through this, it would make an amazing scar to talk about later…

_If_ he lived.

…

"Do you suppose the homunculus and his one-eyed friend are dead yet?" Jack wondered, resting his elbows on the railing and placing his chin on the palms of his hands.

"Jack, I swear I will call for yer death if either one of them is…"

"Pull them up!" Gibbs shouted, and the two Pirate Lords looked up in surprise to find Gibbs and a handful of others suddenly pulling on the rope Ragetti had been using to climb down excitedly.

Looking down into the waters, Barbossa smiled and Jack frowned before huffing and walking back to his cabin.

"I'm going to need some rum to handle this." He muttered, slamming his cabin door shut.

Pintel was holding onto the rope with one hand tightly, a limp Ragetti held close to him with the other arm as the two were pulled up, covered in darkening bruises and bleeding from a few wounds.

Once back on the firm deck of the Pearl, Pintel brushed away any and all questions as he lifted Ragetti up and cradled him in his arms.

"No' a bloody word from any o' yer!" he snarled, baring his teeth at them. "None o' yer 'ad the bloody bollocks ta try an' 'elp the lad an' God 'elp yer if 'e's dead!"

The crew was silent, unable to say anything for their defense.

Growling deep in his throat, Pintel headed back for their bunks, holding Ragetti as if he were a baby.

…

Ragetti woke up hours later, and soon found that if he moved, his body deeply resented this and punished him with agonizing pain for a moment or two.

Moaning, Ragetti stopped his weak attempts at movement and he cracked his eye open when he felt familiar fingers running through his hair.

They were back on their bunk, Ragetti's head in Pintel's lap as the man watched him sleeping, his own head bandaged tightly as if to match Ragetti's bandaged torso and legs.

"Pint?"

"Don' try ta talk, lad." Pintel hushed him gently. "Ye've go' a lo' o' bad bruises."

"Yer 'ead…"

"Et will make me scowl look angrier, aye? A scar from a single shark's tooth is a rare fing, mate!"

Ragetti smiled and he nodded a bit as his eye drooped back closed, too tired and weak to stay up for too long.

"Fanks…Pinters…" he mumbled, using a nickname that Pintel had often yelled at him for using.

Pintel did not mind the nickname this time and he just smiled down at him fondly, gently popping his wooden eye back into its socket.

He slept sitting up for the rest of the night, his arms tight and protecting Ragetti from anymore of Jack's insane schemes.


End file.
